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There is no common standard for food expiration dates, so a lot of good food is discarded because of misunderstandings about expiration dates... All of this causes waste and increases environmental pollution. The United Nations estimates that global food loss and waste accounts for 8%-10% of total greenhouse gas pollution.
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| Throwing away expired food causes many consequences. |
Smart consumption
“There’s a lot of confusion among both consumers and those in the food industry about expiration dates,” said Dana Gunders, executive director of the food waste nonprofit ReFED, according to the Washington Post. Not only does this mislead shoppers, it also means a lot of good, usable food goes to waste.
Some members of Congress are trying to change the law to help reduce emissions from food waste. They have just reintroduced a bill that was introduced in Congress in 2021, called the Food Use-By Date Labeling Act. It would standardize date labels on food, removing the need for expiration dates on many foods and instead providing guidance on safe food storage.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, most expiration dates consumers see on food items are for freshness, not safety. A product that has passed its expiration date may not taste as good as the one fresh off the shelf, but it is still perfectly healthy to eat.
Currently, with the exception of infant formula, which requires expiration dates, the United States lacks a national standard for food expiration dates that many other countries have.
The lack of federal law has led to a web of conflicting laws from state to state, with manufacturers, in many cases, putting whatever dates and phrases they want on their products. We should start weaning ourselves off the habit of throwing out expired but still intact items out of an abundance of caution. Food that is about to expire can also be put in the freezer to last longer, as the freezer acts as a magical pause button, allowing it to retain its flavor and keep it for much longer than usual.
In fact, the annual emissions of rotting food in the United States are roughly equal to those of 42 coal-fired power plants. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global food loss and waste accounts for 8% to 10% of total greenhouse gas pollution. Emily Broad Leib, a professor at Harvard Law School, sees the manufacturing industry and consumers as key players in reducing carbon emissions through smart consumption.
Not small numbers
Jeffrey Costantino, a spokesperson for ReFED, said there really is no standard for food expiration dates. Confusion among consumers who throw away food past its expiration date can be damaging to the climate and household budgets. About a third of the US food supply, or 80 million tons, is thrown away, according to a recent ReFED estimate. The group also found that wasted food could serve about 149 billion meals, use nearly a quarter of the country’s freshwater resources and 16 percent of its cropland, and account for 6 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
On average, Americans waste $1,300 of food each year, estimates Zach Conrad, assistant professor of food systems at the College of William & Mary.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), consumer confusion around expiration dates may be responsible for about 20% of food wasted at home, costing an estimated $161 billion each year. And across the European Union (EU), 88 million tons of food are thrown away each year because they are deemed to be past their expiration date, according to climate action organization Wrap.
In the UK, Waitrose has become one of the first supermarkets to remove the “best before” date in a bid to tackle food waste. “By removing the best before date from our products, we want our customers to use their own judgement to decide whether a product is still edible, increasing the chances of it being used and not wasted,” said Marija Rompani, director of sustainability and ethics at John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose.
No one likes throwing away food, and people need more support to ensure they can cut down on food waste, researchers say. Online tools are now available to help people check the safety of their food, such as FoodKeeper, an app developed by the US Department of Agriculture that allows users to check how long food can be stored.
The Zero Waste Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders, a pioneer in the field of food waste management in the US, offers detailed practical advice, such as scraping off a few inches of blue mold on hard cheese to safely recover the rest. The researchers’ recommendation is to eat the food within 3-5 days and reheat it thoroughly to above 75 degrees Celsius.
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